Amazon is Listening

Sounds like you've been channeling Tesla a bit too much. Welcome to the Brave New World.

Its worse than that. Driving in to work this morning, I heard on the radio, that a couple was talking about flooring,... the couple had a Amazon Echo, and Alexa interpreted a word as 'Alexa' and started recording, then send the conversation to a random person in another state. The random person then contacted the family let them know that maybe their Alexa was hacked... Amazon's investigations stated what I mentioned earlier.

here's the link.

That was covered by HTRN in his opening post, http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-amazon-echo-alexa-20180524-story.html

Unfortunately

This is a shame because I know that the L A Times is a good newspaper.

This is a result of the GDPR taking effect today.

Ironic, I suppose that "...a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area." is preventing you from reading an article about an act of privacy invasion.

Can it be so hard to shut the mic off when not using, just hit the button...

haha

There will never be one in my house.

this was interesting and a little off topic,... we were at my girlfriends mom's house, my girlfriends nephews were discussing what was the most populous city... some responded Mexico City,... others didn't know... one nephew chirped, I'll find itt on his smart phone.

I told him not to bother, its Toyko. of course they didn't listen... only to find out from their phone its Tokyo...

Their dad laughed and said, some people need a smart phone, some don't... I added that its a lot quicker without a smart phone.

The nephews were a little annoyed, but asked how'd I knew that... I then really messed with them when I told them, "I knew that because I used to milk cows."

I'm sure they asked their smart phone on the meaning of that.

Excuse my paranoia,but just because the LED goes off does not mean it is really off.

Easy to hack that,giving you a false sense of security.

Unplug? Even 35 years ago they had cpu's with built in batteries,no idea what they have now;super caps to allow memory storage until full power is restored,then send the info out to a cloud storage,to be used for targeted advertising.

Information is money,and with nearly 8 billion people,that's a lot of info and money.

Any speaker can be used as a microphone,and we all have speakers in our home somewhere,so if you can hear anything "they" can probably hear you,or soon will.

I keep a blank 50 ohm jack in my mic input of my computers.

It looks like a mike to the computer,but gives no signal.

But that is not a guarantee that other methods are not being used.

Well, I must go now,and put on my lead foil hat and adjust my rabbit ears.

And besides,the loose filling is my molar is playing my favorite Looney Tunes melody...

My wife and I both have camera covers on our laptops. Small comfort, I know.

I won't allow those Siri/Alexa contraptions in the house. That said, somebody could be listening to me chewing on a cookie right now through my smart phone in my pocket.

Reasonable precautions are as far as I'll go, until dragged there by big brother.

Well there's nothing to hear here....except the tv, haha...

If you're paranoid or not, they are out to get you.

That's interesting. It looks like Alexa lights up red when disabled but does not light up when enabled. The states of powered down and listening appear to look the same, at least from a distance.

It's actually blue when on and red when mic disabled...

."..Tap the microphone button and the indicator ring and both glow intensely red to indicate that the device is no longer operational and will not accept voice commands until the microphone is enabled again. Curious if the state persists through power outages? We were too; it turns out that the Echo recalls the microphone state and after the boot sequence where the indicator ring flashes blue and Alexa says “Hello!”, it returns immediately to the disabled state."

https://www.howtogeek.com/237397/how-to-stop-your-amazon-echo-from-listening-in/

Neither paranoia or complacency make you any safer.

Things could be listening and tracking but I agree that paranoia will get you nowhere other than perhaps a hotel room and a pigeon as a lover.

Some is over stated like most rfid's that are tiny require very close proximity to be read.

Then you need to consider that if all or even some of them are listening, that is a huge amount of information and who is going to sit and listen or watch that? You could use AI to figure out which are the interesting bits and play it back to someone but still a lot it everyone is the target. There would have to be a real gain from listening to do it. If proof that someone was listening got out there would be huge financial loss as well.

If anything I would imagine devices could be used to target potential known threats but even that would be a lot of data. Once again you could use AI to determine which ones are more credible before being sent to a person to analyze. Also it would likely require a court order or something.

Lots of things are possible with today's gadgets, but that doesn't mean it is practical other than for very targeted use. I would be more worried about hackers of said devices but you still have the problem of quantity.

That said I don't have a voice assistant, nor a smart phone (for other reasons) and I do have tape over my laptop camera, because why not.

Referring to Nikolai Tesla by any chance?

Twas my first thought reading that, as well ;-)

Hey Big Boy....

I don't see the big deal. My brain has been ajar for years.